


to see our glory

by sebviathan



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Historically Accurate, M/M, basically a death fic sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 12:52:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5417753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sebviathan/pseuds/sebviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His gun is not even raised all the way when the bullet rips through him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to see our glory

**Author's Note:**

> Admittedly inspired by both [my own art](http://luciferdraws.tumblr.com/post/134932912451/i-got-really-emotional-about-lams-all-of-a-sudden) and also the released [Laurens’s Death scene](http://thosemomentsinthewoods.tumblr.com/post/129813002267/dear-theodosiatomorrow-therell-be-more-of-us-the) that had been left off the cast recording.

"It is pointless, reckless—a waste of resources and time. The war is won! The remaining British troops will drive themselves out."

That's what they told him in his most recent attempts to recruit an all-black battalion, and it's what they tell him now, as he rallies men for an ambush. So few stand with him that he very nearly drops the plan.

 _Nearly_.

John knows, in spite of everything, that the war is not over.  _We'll never be free until we end slavery,_  he and Alex have said so many times—they spent months writing abolitionist essays together, and in that time he learned how genuine of a passion it was to the both of them. He's never met a truer advocate against the act other than himself.

On some level, he wishes that there was still considerable fighting left to be done, if only so he could see his goal through. If he could free a  _single_  slave then he could carry that pride with him, knowing he may have helped planted a seed of a movement... Laurens and Hamilton, living on throughout history as abolitionists first and foremost, side by side.  _Laurens and Hamilton._

Alex would want him to.  _He'd jump for joy,_  he thinks often, always with a grin—he fantasizes about their ideal future, of all the ideas that Alex has told him about (whispered to him in the dark, muttered only inches away from his skin as they held each other before falling asleep).

John keeps that in mind when he begins his ambush of the Combahee River.

Alex would  _want_  him to push the fight, to drive the British out of Charleston himself instead of waiting—

His gun is not even raised all the way when the bullet rips through him.

It is one bullet; small and precise, lodged in his chest before he can finish his thought. For a moment he doesn't even register that it's there.

This is—

No.  _No._  He  _cannot_  die, not _now_ , not after all he's done. Surely he won't—the wound is likely not nearly as terrible as it feels, or this is some nightmare and he'll wake up any moment, ready for the  _real_  ambush...

He doesn't wake up.

No one has come to his aid. Are his men dead? Or have they abandoned him?

No matter—he must fight it. John  _will_  fight it, like he's fought everything else, because he absolutely refuses to die. Because Alex would want him to fight—hell, he'd  _demand_  it, and he'd do so in a long and somehow poetic paragraph. And then write it down afterward.

 _Alex._  He can't let him down like this. The physical pain he suffers now would likely be nothing to the man.

(He can't breathe—his chest heaves and he gasps and coughs, and suddenly his throat feels warm and full and it's terribly uncomfortable. Something drips out the side of his mouth.)

The last letter John wrote to him was full of hope and affection, the sort that he used to hesitate to put on paper for fear that the words may reach other eyes. They were explicit and surely damning if someone else  _was_  to read them—he feels no dissatisfaction there, at least.

(He doesn't stop fighting, but it becomes more and more difficult by the second.)

He can't help but think of his wife and child now, if only in the sense that she was a mere social obligation. John has never felt the slightest physical inclination towards women, and while he never believed that that fact would  _literally_  damn him, the thought does occur now: Will Heaven let him in?

Does he even  _want_  to be allowed in? If indecency of that nature truly does send him to Hell, then he should be glad to know Alex will still follow him.

(The heaving and gasping comes slower. The wet spot in his coat covers half his torso, now.)

They used to lie on the grass together, him and Alex. Not completely unlike the position he unwillingly takes now.

They used to steal moments away from the war, back when it was still in full force, and be alone in the shade. Almost a mile away from camp, they'd find a spot to embrace, to share longing gazes without judgment—to simply exist together, alone.

They used to talk of death—as an honor, as a sacrifice for the war, as... a relief.

_"If we wind up on the losing side, our deaths would be the only suitable end to that story."_

Alex would say it and John would agree—neither of them wanted to live in the future where the British won. The idea of death seemed almost like a peaceful sleep, and he always hoped that if and when it came, they would be together.

To die in each other's arms was a sort of recurring fantasy of his, to be quite honest. And it's the cruelest indignity John has ever faced that he must do this alone.

It's even crueler that Alex will be forced to continue on living without him, but John supposes that he at least has Eliza.

(Either the sky is growing dark far too early or his vision is becoming spotty.)

Why now? Why like this?

_I don't deserve this._

God, it hurts, dying so far away from him hurts worse than anything, it's just not  _fair_ _—_

Yet. as he loses no fear or indignance, John spends his very last moments far more intensely under a swell of love.

_...My dear Alexander, take your time._

(He fades in such a way that feels like he always expected—like sleep.)

His lips just barely manage to frame his last thought, his last attempt to fight:

_Raise a glass to freedom._

**Author's Note:**

> Once you've finished wiping away your tears, I want you all to know that John's last letter to Hamilton really WAS super affectionate (and/or dirty) to the point of being damning, since parts of it were "sanitized" according to the Chernow biography. 
> 
> The letter ended with this: _"Adieu, my dear friend. While circumstances place so great a distance between us, I entreat you not to withdraw the consolation of your letters. You know the unalterable sentiments of your affectionate Laurens."_ So I do think he would have felt closure in that regard.
> 
> Of course, the fact that he proceeded to engage in an ambush likely means he never received Hamilton's last letter telling him to "put down his sword" and come join him. You can resume crying now.


End file.
